Friday, November 21, 2008

Civitas Post-Election Survey

Civitas came out with a post-election survey earlier this week. Here's what I found interesting:

-Slightly more people said that North Carolina was headed in the right direction than off on the wrong track. Whenever we ask that question about the national picture markedly more people say that things are off on the wrong track. That's why the Democrats are going to be running Washington now while also continuing to hold control in Raleigh.

-When people who didn't vote for Barack Obama were asked why, only 2% said that it was because of his 'associations.' John McCain's ad campaign in the state was way too focused on random abstractions like Ayers that the voters didn't care about, and he didn't do a good job of showing folks why they should vote for him.

-Only 2% of respondents who didn't vote for Kay Hagan said it was because she was too liberal. I think the Republican strategy of using liberal as an expletive and thinking that's going to be good enough to win them elections in this state is over. I'm going to have more on that sometime soon.

-16% of folks who voted against Elizabeth Dole said they did it because they didn't like her campaign ads, second only to the number of people who said they didn't support her because she was a Republican. We didn't need much more evidence that Godless Americans was a disaster, but there is some.

-By comparison only 1% of people who didn't vote for Bev Perdue said it was because of her ads. Pat McCrory deserves a gold medal for whining with all of the post-election excuse making he and his supporters have done, but the truth of the matter is that if he really didn't believe in negative campaigning he should have asked the RGA to pull its ads. The reality is that he was happy to let other people do his dirty work for him, and as far as I'm concerned he has zero credibility on that issue.

-Our polling has repeatedly shown the Palin pick was a disaster for John McCain in North Carolina, and Civitas shows it once again. Just 23% of voters said her selection made them more likely to vote for McCain with 40% saying that it made them less likely to do so. Media coverage of Palin's visits to the state focused too much on her adoring crowds and not enough on the fact that while she was very popular with Republican base voters she was a turn off to independents and an overall drag on the ticket here.